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Jewish World Review Dec. 19, 2011 / 23 Kislev, 5772 Mitt Romney's clone wars --- and ours By Kathryn Lopez
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Funny thing about having 13 Republican primary debates: Sometimes it takes that many to learn anything. For instance, during his post-debate show on Dec. 15, Sean Hannity admitted to Mitt Romney that he hadn't realized -- until Romney said so during the debate -- that the Massachusetts legislature when Romney was governor was sometimes as much as 85 percent Democrat. If that was news to a professional political commentator, you can safely make a $10,000 bet that Hannity is not alone. The fact is important because it gives a more accurate picture of Romney's record, and sheds light on the compromises he made and those he refused to.
And that most recent debate -- the last one before the Iowa caucus -- was also the first time that Romney concisely told the story of not only his pro-life conversion in politics, but the radicalism that forced the issue:
"With regard to abortion, I had the experience of coming into office, running for governor saying, 'I'm going to keep the laws as they exist in the state,'" he said. "They were pro-choice laws, so effectively I was pro-choice. Then I had a bill come to my desk that didn't just keep the laws as they were but would have created new embryos for the purpose of destroying them. I studied it in some depth and concluded I simply could not sign on to take human life. I vetoed that bill."
As governor in 2005, Romney was faced with the Harvard Stem Cell Institute's intention to clone human embryos for research. When Massachusetts Senate President Robert E. Travaglini introduced the bill in question, Romney opposed it and moved to prohibit the research.
Supporters of Harvard's plans were making wild claims, as people are wont to do regarding controversial issues. Remember John Edwards' snake-oil claim that Christopher Reeve would have walked again if we permitted such research? Rather than buying into the hype, Romney became a student of the issue. And he came to the conclusion, as he put it at the time: "Whether you're personally pro-life or pro-choice, we should be able to agree on ethical boundaries that should not be crossed when it comes to cloning human life for experimentation."
Romney proposed new legislation, which bioethical/technical journal the New Atlantis described as such: "(It) would still permit (but not endorse or fund) the use of embryos left over from reproductive IVF procedures, but not the creation of new human embryos (either by cloning or IVF) simply to destroy them for their cells. The Romney initiative was a direct challenge to Harvard, which already engages in the creation of embryos for research and destruction and stands poised to approve research cloning."
The embryonic stem cell/cloning issue has seen more than its share of emotion, confusion and manipulation. A 2006 Missouri ballot initiative tried to sow enough confusion to enshrine a right to cloning in the state constitution. Advocates of this radical, dehumanizing research desperately sought government funding even as smart businessmen wouldn't make the risky investments. Just this fall, in fact, the Geron Corp. abandoned its embryonic stem cell research, citing "capital scarcity."
For Romney, the issue hit not just his statehouse desk, but close to home. He told The New York Times at the time: "My wife has multiple sclerosis, and we would love for there to be a cure for her disease and for the diseases of others. But there is an ethical boundary that should not be crossed."
When Romney first approached conservative audiences with the story of his conversion, there was skepticism, and some of that skepticism still dogs him today. But the way he talked about his views on cloning in 2007 reveals that his stance remains firm: "The Roe v. Wade mentality has so cheapened the value of human life that rational people saw human life as mere research material to be used and then destroyed. … (But) what some see as a mere clump of cells is actually a human life. Human life has identity. Human life has the capacity to love and be loved. Human life has a profound dignity, undiminished by age or infirmity."
I don't know which candidate will survive past the Republican primary process. But I'd like us all to face these existential questions about who we are and where we are going. Whether or not you fully believe Romney and his conversion story, his words in the last debate of 2011 present us with a challenge to do what he did.
He had a complicated and controversial decision to make back in 2005, and he took it seriously. We should do the same, and be more rigorous when it comes to issues of human dignity and justice. We need to make sure that, in all the broad characterizations and rapid media bombardments, we don't miss the full picture as we evaluate candidates and as we make intimate, challenging, even painful choices in our personal lives. Mitt Romney's conversion story presents an opportunity to ask a big question: What exactly are we doing to human life in the name of reproductive health and scientific curiosity?
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